Feeling So Sick I Couldn’t Walk Until a Fellow Passenger Practically Supported Me to a Restroom.

Back when I was my late teens, my morning travel was on an packed public transport. The vehicle was always crowded and was consistently completely full when I boarded.

During a certain commute, I was feeling terribly ill as the bus lurched around each corner. I continuously reassured myself to persevere for a few more stops before the bus arrived at my stop, and then I could sprint quickly for the nearest public toilet to be sick.

As we neared the road leading to my stop and it dawned on me I was unable to make it. Suddenly, it seemed a curtain fell over me. The world became hazy and muffled; like someone had turned off the audio. My mind raced, “I’m going to faint”.

Luckily I was near the front inside the vehicle, allowing me to take several steps to ask the driver and asked the driver to pull over, telling him I needed to be sick. The driver opened the entrance and I weakly exited onto the sidewalk.

I was determined not to vomit in front of a busy multi-lane road, so I forced myself up and started trying to make my way to the park across the road, where I thought I could at least discreetly hide near some foliage to throw up. But then I must have blacked out. I sensed my body but walking was impossible or see clearly, so I began crawling towards my intended destination.

“Are you okay, dear?”

At that moment, someone picked me up. There was someone holding me and heard a man say, “Everything alright, love?” I managed to tell the kind passerby that I had to to be sick. So he virtually supported my weight over to an adjacent building and guided me inside the women’s restroom. He wanted to know if I wanted him to wait for me but I refused.

A few minutes later, I had recovered to the point of sitting on the toilet and from outside the door came his voice asking, “Are you feeling better, dear? Do you need anything?” I could not to rise right away but I did succeed to thank him and following a brief period recovered the use of my feet. I made my way home and then spent several days healing from which was a horrible case of gastroenteritis.

I did not see his features – just his lower half along with a sizable metal toolbox he had with him – but he helped me, at a moment I was at my most vulnerable.

Many times, life tends to make people defensive, aggressive and competitive. What he did was the kind of action that reverses that hardening of the heart. He demonstrated that our default setting leans toward compassion, something I love about my fellow humans.